Breaking The Taboo
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LARRY DERFNER ISRAEL CORRESPONDENT
A housing site in a Golan Heights settlement.
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IN THE WEST BLOOMFIELD PLAZA
(1ST STOPLIGHT SOUTH OF MAPLE)
Jewish settlers in Gaza and the West Bank are breaking the silence about
government aid so they can move to safety.
Photo by RNS/Reu ters
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he meetings are sched-
uled at three West Bank
settlements. Thirty-sev-
en families are due to at-
tend one; 20 families are coming
to another, and dozens more
plan to turn up at the third. The
settlers will speak to Yossi Katz,
a Labor Party Knesset member,
about what until now has been
a taboo subject: the possibility
of getting government compen-
sation so they can move across
the Green Line to the safe side
of Israel.
"Dozens of settlers who feel
this way have written to me,"
said Mr. Katz. "They don't want
to move to America, and they
don't want to live with Hamas
on one side of them and the rad-
ical settler underground on the
other side."
The dominant image of Jew-
ish settlers is of ideologically-
committed pioneers, of people
responding to the possibility of
Palestinian autonomy by dig-
ging in, fighting back, and
swearing to never leave holy
Judea, Samaria and Gaza. But
most of the 130,000 settlers are
not ideologues, but rather peo-
ple who moved there for rela-
tively cheap housing. And also,
except for the danger, for a good
quality of life.
With the recent rise in terror,
and the uncertainty of whether
their settlements will remain
under Israeli rule or fall within
the boundaries of a future
Palestinian entity, a growing
number of settlers want out.
A recent survey of Jews in
the West Bank and Gaza by Dr.
Mina Tsemach, Israel's most
prominent public opinion poll-
ster, found that 33 percent
Thirty-three
percent of all
settlers would pull
up stakes if their
settlements are
inside the
Palestinian
autonomous area.
The government
insists that all
settlements will
be secure.
would accept compensation and
pull up stakes if their settle-
ments end up inside the Pales-
tinian autonomous area.
The poll also found a wide
gap between the attitudes of re-
ligious and non-religious set-
tlers: 80 percent of the religious
said they would stay put even
under Palestinian autonomy,
while only 33 percent of secular
settlers said they were that de-
termined.
Mr. Katz and Meretz's Shu-
lamit Aloni have proposed cre-
ating a government fund to
provide money or homes in Is-
rael proper for settlers who wish
to leave. Such a fund, they say,
would be a gesture of empathy
with the settlers' fears.
But the government has shot
down the idea, insisting that
all settlements will be politically
secure — at least for the five-
year autonomy period — and
that it does not want to partic-
ipate in coaxing Jews out of
their homes. Meanwhile, settler
leaders oppose it because they
think it is a cynical form of
bribery aimed at weakening
their movement and making it
easier to give land to Palestini-
ans..
In a recent letter to Mrs.
Aloni, Ami and Batya Sela, who
live in Ma'aleh Ephraim, a 400-
family settlement about 20
miles from Jericho in the West
Bank's Jordan Valley, asked,
"in all earnestness, that imme-
diate resettlement be arranged
for all families who want to
move to the other side of the
Green Line. We do not want —
and are not prepared — to be
guinea pigs for the next five to
six years."
Ami Sela, who manages the